Fever Dream
by Romantique The Original
Summary: A stand-alone, one-shot. A Raylan-centric fic with Arlo, Tim, and Rachael along for the ride. This fic was written immediately following the end of Season 3.


Title: Fever Dream

Author: Romantique

Classification: Raylan Hurt/Comfort

Rating: M for coarse language and violence, but no worse than the show.

Summary: A Raylan-centric stand-alone, one-shot. Arlo, Tim, and Rachael are along for the ride.

Disclaimer: I wrote this fic immediately following the end of Season 3.

Legal: These characters do not belong to me. I'm just a fan and have not made a dime. Please email me to obtain permission to post.

Heat seared from behind his closed lids, somewhere behind the eyeballs. Unaware of his surroundings, he became vaguely conscious of the strange, hot sensation while at the same time, his teeth chattered ... uncontrollably so.

"Raylan?" a feminine voice spoke from what seemed to be far beyond the ethers.

The law man tossed his head to and fro in a fevered frenzy, when a weakened moan escaped his parched lips, followed by an even weaker outbreath. He struggled to open his heavy eyes but to no avail.

"My God," the voice spoke again with alarm. "You're burning up!"

A moment later, he could feel a cool sensation against his forehead, brow, and along the side of his face. Drops of cool water trickled into his ear.

"I'm c-c-c-old," he let out a chattering whisper, finally managing to open his eyes to the size of slits.

The light of day was blinding, and the rims of his eyes were crimson red. His face was flushed from the fever.

"You're running a very high temperature and having chills. I'm sorry, but I've got to cool you down, fast," the woman warned.

Pulling back the sheet and blanket that covered him, she found he was clad in boxers and a wife beater. She worked quickly to wipe down his neck, chest, arms, and hands with a cool, damp washcloth that quickly became warm upon contact with his febrile skin. Useless to cool him, she quickly dumped some ice cubes from a Styrofoam cup into the basin to chill the water. She then dunked the warmed washcloth into the icy water, wringing out the excess before proceeding to wipe down his legs and feet. She repeated the procedure over and over again until finally, she pushed his long, lanky frame over on its side and pulled up his t-shirt to reveal his back. She could feel the heat radiating from his body, as she began to wipe down his back, then his torso.

"No ... don't," he shook his head in protest. "Soooooo c-c-c-old."

His eyes struggled to remain open. With nothing in focus, he couldn't see. So, he blindly grabbed for the edge of the blanket and pulled it towards him, covering his arms and bringing it up towards his chest and neck. He dug his toes underneath the blanket and then, his feet and lower legs, into the welcoming warmth.

"Okay," the woman caved against her better judgment, letting the blanket slide, "but you have to swallow these."

She sat down on the bed next to him and helped him hold his head up, off the pillow. "Open your mouth."

He did as he was told, and she popped two caplets into his mouth, noticing that his breath was very hot, like the heat that pours out of an oven when the door is opened. She brought the rim of the glass to his lips, tilting it back to allow some of the cool water to pool into his mouth. He swallowed, staring ahead straight past her with a vacant look on his gaunt face.

She placed the glass on the nightstand with one hand while helping him lower his head with the other. He was out before his head even hit the pillow. She covered him, as she agreed.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The yelling and the screaming. It was happening again.

Arlo Givens came stumbling through the door, drunk as a skunk with a chip on his shoulder ... just begging for a fight.

"God dammit, Frances," he started in. "I don't understand why I can't have a steak when I want one. I give you plenty of money. It ain't so much to ask!"

"You didn't give me any money," his wife protested. "You drank it up." Then, under her breath, she added, "As usual."

"Don't lie to me," Arlo threatened, "or I'll beat you silly, woman."

"I'm not lyin'," she persisted. "You did give me $150 ... _a month ago_, Arlo. But I had to pay for the phone and the electrics. And your son needed some medicine from the doctor for his cough. We've been without groceries for a week. I have to make due with what little food we have left or what I can borrow from my sister."

"You know what I think? I think you're a thief _and_ a whore, and I don't believe Raylan's my son," Arlo ranted on.

Whenever he came home drunk, he would deny his son's paternity. And just because Arlo stole and screwed around, he always accused his wife of stealing and screwing around on him, too. Frances always thought he was just trying to ease a guilty conscience.

"That little bastard ain't nothin' but a titty baby," he continued on with his rant. "You ruined him, Frances. Now, he's useless, and you're to blame for that."

"Don't say that," Frances, protested. "He _is_ your son. You _know_ he is."

There was many a time when she wished he wasn't.

"And you don't need to go runnin' to the doctor with him every time the boy sneezes, spendin' my money," Arlo went on and on. "He's a pansy, a momma's boy."

"Well, maybe if you'd let me heat his room, he wouldn't keep gettin' sick!" she defended herself. "It's winter, Arlo!"

Arlo refused to spend any of his money to put a woodstove in Raylan's room.

"Why do I need to pay good money to heat his room?" he asked. "Most nights when I come home, I find him up in the bed with you. He's too old to be sleepin' with you, Frances! It don't look right! Next time I find him in my bed, I'm gonna beat him silly. And when I'm done with him, I'm gonna start on you! That is **MY** bed, Frances! **MY** bed!"

It was true. Helen Givens often allowed her four-year-old to climb into bed with her on nights when Arlo was out drinking. On such nights, Arlo never came home, and it was the only time Raylan could get warm and actually fall asleep.

"That little son-of-a-bitch ain't in my bed now, is he?" Arlo's anger ignited like a stick of dynamite.

"He's sick! Yes, I let him go to sleep in the bed where it's warm," she pleaded. "He needs to rest to get well."

"I told you what I was gonna do if I found that little titty baby in my bed, again!" he threatened.

And Arlo stomped off towards their bedroom, pounding his fist in the other hand.

"No!" Frances screamed, running ahead of her inebriated husband. "I'll move him. I'll move him back to his room."

"Git outta my way," Arlo warned.

"You said _the next time_," she pleaded. "I swear it won't happen again. Let me move him, and ... I'll fix you somethin' to eat. Okay?"

She would say anything to buy them some time.

"I can't eat a steak after workin' hard all day, all because of this little bastard," Arlo insisted, his ire growing by the second.

Frances ran ahead and threw herself on top of her son to protect him from what was surely to come. Arlo came up behind her and pulled her off of the boy, tossing her small frame across the room. Then, Arlo reached for the sleeping young boy, startling him awake from a dead sleep.

Disoriented from his cold, the medicine, and being awakened with such a start, Raylan had a hard time understanding what was going on. He felt his father lift him out of the bed in one jerky move, when he saw his mother come up from behind.

"Please, Arlo," she pleaded. "Put him down. Let me take care of this. I'll make it right."

"I told you, this don't look right," Arlo went on, holding the boy's limp form. "And I'm gonna make sure he never climbs in **MY** bed, again."

Arlo grabbed the boy from underneath his arms and began shaking him, hard.

"How many times have I told you ... you ain't sleepin' in this bed? Ever! Do you understand? You little stack of sheet," Arlo sneered at the small boy.

Wide-eyed in terror, Raylan watched his mother come up from behind with a baseball bat and hit his father across the back of his shoulders. Arlo's grip loosened, and he dropped the boy onto the mattress and spun around, grabbing the bat out of Frances' hands.

"You crazy bitch!" Arlo screamed and pulled the bat back and took a swing that followed through to a direct hit across his wife's shoulder and upper arm.

The hit literally lifted her off the ground and crashed her into the wall. From the bed, Raylan watched through widened eyes, frozen in fear.

"No, no!" Frances screamed, cowered in a ball on the floor, covering her face and head with her hands.

Arlo continued to beat her over and over again with the bat, while Frances screamed in pain.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"No! Daddy, no!" Raylan cried out in his fevered sleep. "Stop! Don't hit Momma! No!"

"Raylan?" the woman tried to wake the man from his nightmare. "Raylan?"

"Rachael?" Raylan asked, finally coming to.

His heart was pounding, his eyes filled with tears. Sweat poured off his face. The fuzzy, distant female face and voice finally came into full focus.

Standing nearby with her arms crossed in front of her, Deputy Marshal Rachael Brooks answered with, "Welcome back."

She gave her fellow marshal a little smile that thinly masked her relief. "I thought I was going to have to call you an ambulance and blow our cover. It was a close call." She nodded, "Glad to see I made the right one."

"Where ... Where are we?" Raylan asked, disoriented and finding he was lying in a pool of sweat.

He tried to shake the cobwebs out his head.

"We're still in Phoenix," she answered. "Tim flew in this morning. We're going to leave here in about an hour to pick up Mack the Knife in Prescott and transport him over to the Phoenix office."

Raylan tried to sit upright, but just as quickly went back down. Both weak and dizzy, it was all he could do to hold onto the moving bed that, in reality, was not moving at all.

"Oh, no. You're not going anywhere. Art's orders," she stated very matter-of-factly. "You were delirious with fever ... all night. Thank God, it finally broke. Tim's bringing you back some chicken broth and Gatorade. You are to stay right where you are and rest, before we take the long flight home tomorrow morning. Tim and I will take care of the heavy lifting."

"Shit," he let out a sigh of self-disgust.

It was all coming back to him. He and Rachael had come to Phoenix to pick up a wanted Mafia fugitive who went by the name, _'Mack the Knife,'_ given to him for his contracted criminal use of carving cutlery, and transport him to the Phoenix District Office. Raylan had crossed paths with this guy while in Miami. He surmised Tim must have been called in to replace him ... because he couldn't do the job.

"Look, I'm sorry," he grimaced.

"You've got nothing to be sorry about," she said. "I'm just glad to see you're doing better. You were _really_ sick, Raylan. I can't say that strongly enough to you. No one is going to accuse you of slacking. You just need to rest and get your strength back. There's no other way around it. Okay?"

"Yeah ... okay," he relented, feeling as if his ass had been kicked, six ways to Sunday.

Physically, he was in no position to argue with her.

About that time, Deputy Marshal Tim Gutterson bounded through the door carrying some brown paper bags from the store.

"You're awake," Tim noted with an uncharacteristic expression of relief on his face. "How are you feelin'?"

"Honestly?" Raylan asked. "Like 50 miles of bad country road."

Tim smiled. That wisecrack sounded exactly like the Raylan he knew and loved, sort of, but it was clearly a good sign.

"Well, you look about that bad, too," Tim began returning their typical banter. "Would you like somethin' to drink?"

That was the main reason Tim ran to the store, to pick up a few things for his ailing team member.

"I'll get some ice," Rachael concurred. "Drinking is the best thing you can do," she said, making the remark directly to Raylan.

"You know, you might not have gotten the flu if you'd taken your damn flu shot this year," Tim couldn't help but rub it in whenever possible to this legendary marshal.

"But I did take the flu shot ... and I got sick anyway," Raylan hit Tim's lob right back to him. "So, there you go." A beat later, he continued. "You wouldn't by any chance have some bourbon in that bag, would you?" Raylan asked.

A shot of bourbon always did the trick for him when he was sick. His Aunt Helen would sneak him a shot when he was sick as a kid.

"Afraid not," Tim pulled out a big bottle of red Gatorade from one of the bags, screwed open the cap, and handed the bottle to Rachael who immediately poured some into a cup of ice. "This stuff has got everything your body needs," Tim declared. "Drink up, Shriner."

Raylan took the iced cup of red liquid from Rachael, took a sip, and made a face. "They can try and disguise it all they want with all the fruity flavors, but Gatorade has always tasted like sweat to me."

"Good," Tim shot back, "because you sure lost a lot of it. In fact, you're startin' to smell pretty ripe over there. When we get back from transporting that _'50's song son-of-a-bitch,'_ I'll help you get to and from the shower."

Raylan couldn't disagree that he was beginning to smell. "Oh, I think I can manage gettin' to the shower on my own."

"Right. Sure you can," Rachael nodded in jest, never having much of a stomach for the bravado that reverberated between her two, male marshal compadres.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"I don't see why I have to be carted around in this damn wheel chair," Raylan complained. "I'm perfectly capable of puttin' one foot in front of the other."

He would have protested even harder but the truth was, despite his bravado, he was still too weak to do so.

"Because I'm not carrying your ass throughout the Concourse when you pass out, again," Tim explained with great irritation in his voice from behind, as he pushed the chair through the airport. "Hell, our gate is clear on the other side of the Terminal, and you are not gonna make us miss our flight."

"I'm not gonna pass out, again," Raylan continued with his plea. "I think that happened because I hadn't eaten anything in ... like what? Two or three days? Once again, ice cream saved my life, as it has on more than one occasion."

"Doesn't matter," Tim said, in no mood for Raylan's quips. His sympathy for Raylan being seriously ill had already left him. "Stop complainin' and enjoy the ride."

"I'm not complainin'," Raylan insisted, even though he clearly was.

"Look at it this way," Rachael chimed in, as she briskly walked beside them, taking almost two steps to Tim's one, just to keep up. "We'll get to board early with you in that chair. That will get us all home that much sooner. Now, doesn't that sound good to you?"

"Goin' home, a shot of bourbon, sleepin' in my own bed? I must admit that does sound quite nice, right about now," Raylan lamented.

"Yeah, sleepin' in your own bed ... above a bar," Tim jabbed. "We're havin' to listen to you, always complainin' about how you don't get enough sleep. Hmmmm. I wonder why?"

Rachael's thoughts immediately went to nursing Raylan through the night. She knew exactly why he had trouble sleeping, and it had nothing to do with living above a bar. She decided then and there that no one, not even Raylan, would ever know his secret, the secret she learned in the midst of his fever dream.

-fin-


End file.
